How To be a Rock Star

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‚Äúif you don‚Äôt dream somebody will dream for you, and next thing you know you‚Äôll be living their dream not your own‚Ä¶ what a nightmare‚ÄĚ
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intro
i have been spending a lot of time thinking about the correlation between kingdom and vocation… not so much the two bi-vocationally coexisting in a platonic sort of way… but rather how a poverty model vs model of wealth can shape our views of
o¬†kingdom
o¬†self worth
o¬†goal setting
o¬†philo love
o¬†body kinesthetics
o¬†addiction
really, just how influenced we are…¬† it could be how to be a rockstar, and thematically it seems better… but for now, i’ll call it something else…
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wtf?
i can still remember the feeling of intrigue when i heard a college prof. say in a super contemptuous voice, the kind profs only use when their trying to impress impressionable young minds…
“come on just how hard is it to become a doctor?¬† sure it takes some intelligence, but mostly it’s just consistency in the classroom…”
it was almost as if i had been betrayed when i heard that.¬† my initial thoughts were that he was jealous of their Md even though he had a Phd.¬† but the more he elaborated, it was obvious he was just stating what he viewed as facts.¬† but what he was saying was contrary to every thing i was really ever told…
o¬†“to be a doctor you need to be good at math”
o¬†“to be a doctor you have to do really well on SAT’s”
o¬†“if you don’t get into a good college you’ll never be a doctor”
o¬†“you need straight A’s if your even remotely planning on being a doctor… do you have any idea how competitive medical school is?
o¬†“at this point, it’s really too late for you to consider becoming a medical student… by the time you are you’ll be in your 3o’s
i’m not sure why i have been thinking about this so much lately, possibly because i have been bombarded with it as of late, but it seems so clear to me that people end up doing the things they do based on environment…
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warrior
recently i was speaking with a 15 year old girl who was sharing her frustration of living in a very rural and small town.¬† her mom left the family when she was 9, and she lives with her father, who is a logger, and her brother (7 years older) who is a logger…¬† she shared that she doesn’t have anybody to teach her how to do anything else… she has a great head on her shoulders and knows that carhartt’s aren’t exactly fashion wear, but she said it’s what her family¬† (dad and brother) wear, and it’s what she now likes…¬† she sadly was predicting her future and said¬†
“i’ll probably get pregnant in the next 5 years and maybe it will even be by somebody i like, i’ll live in the same house i am in now, because that’s all i know, and my family has said “there’s no point in doing anything different because that’s who we are, and this is what we do…”
contrast this to another recent conversation i had with a 3rd generation medical doctor friend of mine….¬† he grew up with fair schooling, went to a fair high school, went do a fair college, and i am sure he is an exceptional doctor.¬† when he has told me his story in the past, one thing that stood out was that he said
“you know it’s not like i really even planned the whole thing out… my grandpa was a doctor, my dad was a doctor… it was just sorta of like… oh, i guess that would be a good job, mmmn, i’ll do that”… he later added ” it wasn’t as if i knew how to do any other kind of thing, i didn’t really have any other skills that i had picked up along the way…”
laughing about it later, i was reminded of a guy i saw on american idol last night who was a farm boy from texas… when interviewed about farming he said
“this is my family farm, my grandpa farmed it, my dad farmed it, and now i farm it….”
almost the same factors, family influence, demonstration… and a basic assumption that life was static.
it seems like it is more about exposure than anything…
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where is the how to?
i notice it a lot in athletics… there is a system, a certain mentality and a way of going about being an athlete that i think is just as much taught as caught…¬† i see it all the time in sports, really well meaning parents that want their kids to be successful in athletics, but really dont’ have a clear road map to get from point A (pop warner) to point “M” (the major leagues)¬† it sort of feels like that infomercial that airs on saturday mornings on every channel around 6 am.
“learn the secrets of real estate that only successful millionaires, know . . . how to retire with 35 thousand dollars a month, without ever investing your own money….”
i am sure there is a system in place to accomplish becoming a real estate mogul… lol, i certainly don’t know that one… but with a great deal of certainty things stick out to me in athletics… i don’t know if it’s because i have been around them so much or what…¬†
just recently a friend of mine who played really competitive college hockey was standing at the end of the rink… we were watching some coaches line kids up… and he said… “that just bugs the crap out of me… come on, why the_____ would that guy line the kids up against the wall?¬† it defeats the whole purpose of the drill… (this stood out to him, who had been around the sport, the drills, who understood the in’s and out’s, the purpose of the drills and what they were to accomplish… but to the well meaning 40 year old volunteer who was only a page ahead of the 8 year old kids he was coaching it wasn’t intuitive…
i can’t help but think there is something uniquely kingdom on that last sentence…
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docstar how to i get a job?¬†
a friend of mine tells the hilarious story of when he was 27 on the verge of a divorce, living in a snowed in cabin in montana in the winter time… he was at the bar on a sunday night with his brother, then 32 celebrating the deer they had poached earlier that morning (late january) when his wife stormed in… she had made the 5 mile drive “into town” in their beat up jeep cj5 that had no roof… literally driving to the bar, in the snow with their new baby in the front seat (actually as the story goes on the floor because it was “safer” ) to tell him that news ”
“if you don’t get a job i’m leaving… ” he said after she left, he asked his brother “did she seem mad to you?” and then after they were done laughing about it, he said:
“hey, how do you get a job… i mean, is there like an office you go to? or is there a place you go to get one?”
over hearing the conversation, they sort of turned to the bar tender who he said was almost as puzzled as they were told them.
“i think you can look in the want adds….”¬†
so that night they started looking in wants adds for a “job”…
for the next 3 days, he said he walked the 5 miles back to the bar, to look in the paper.¬† at 27 years of age, he had just gotten out of the coast guard where for the previous 10 years he said he was a cook, and basically never got above deck.¬†¬† so he said during those 3 days he decided it would be “cool” to be an electrician or a janitor…¬† so he ruled out the petty jobs, holding out for the career move as an electrician or janitor… days turned into weeks…
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how to be a Rockstar
you know the drill those weeks turned into more, and eventually the ultimatum was on the verge of fulfillment… the solution?
move, get out of the groove, shake things up and go to california… they literally traded the jeep for a 66 chevy pickup and drove to san louis obispo (with the baby on the floor of the truck)where john got eventually got his dream job as a janitor, then later electrician… all the while writing music doing the other thing that brought him life… like playing his music…¬†
things turn out when mercy is involved…¬†
very long story short…he went on to make several albums, his wife won an emmy or a grammy (i don’t remember for being the most recorded song of the year… and stuff happened…
hearing them retell the tale is worth 100x the cup of coffee (even at starbucks), or meal it will cost at (at Rembrandt’s as well as the laughs about poaching in montana….
o¬†but who woulda thunk?
o¬†what would have happened without the move
o¬†what if a divorce
o¬†what of the kids
o¬†what now
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i‚Äôm going to be dr.
i met jim in jr college.¬† although i was the only white guy in the class and he was the only asian, we were both the only ones in our English class that spoke it as a first language… infact we might have been the only ones who even spoke it.
¬† it’s fair to say i matriculated low, quite low on the entrance exam pre-tests… grammar never has been a strong suit, but i felt like a rockstar as i properly separated the conjunction couldn’t into two words and the rest of the class looked on in awe, (i now realize that it was actually only a look of confusion, but at the time i had really impressed myself)… the class looked like that bud light commercial “i don’t speak english”…
jim was about 30 years old, had a VERY recently divorced ex-wife (they were still moving out stuff into his condo) a 2 year old daughter, and as far as i could tell he was still really broken about it.¬† he was a mechanic at the toyota dealer and we were both sort of freshmen.¬† occasionally we hung out after “English‚ÄĚ class as we packed up our bags.¬† one day after class and out of the blue he just announced to me¬†
“i’m going to be a doctor?”
“a dr?¬† seriously?…. ”
“yep”
“are you good a math?”¬† was my first question
“nope ” he said laughing. . .¬† as it turned out we were in the same crappy low level math class too
“how long is it going to take to be a doctor” i asked
“the guidance counselor told me that, if i take 3 years of junior college i can probably transfer to cal state fullerton as a sophmore, then i’ll have to take at least 3 more years to graduate with a BA, then if i can get into med school, i’ll have between 8-10 and then i am hoping to have it within 15 years, so i guess that’s about 21 years from now…”
“dude”
“i know”… he added “but hey i’ll be 50 by then, and if i am lucky i’ll be doing what i love… and right now i really hate where i work”
“how much will it cost to be a doctor”
“i figured it out last night… I’m guessing between $250-300K” he said
(btw just yesterday Jan 08 Dartmouth College voted to waive undergrad tuition for families that make under $75K a year)
like a scene out of fight club, i remember staring at him and seeing his conviction…
we saw each other quite a bit over the next couple of years, but since he was mostly a math/ science major, and i was trapped inside pre-pre-pre English 101, we didn’t have too many classes together…
after moving away to NYC for a few years, we moved back to so-cal and i happened to run into jim at a grocery store… we talked and i asked, how the medical pursuit was going?
“oh that… it turned out that was unrealistic… i gave it a go, but i’m back at the toyota dealer…” staring at him, i noticed that look in his eyes, a glaze over meets water, the look of somebody who has been broken, or through a brutal divorce, where love is still involved, and feelings are deep.¬† the sort of look that a movie, or song can beckon… it would have been the perfect scene depicting a loss… (at that point i should have pulled out my fight club gun, and put it to his head)
he didn’t need to explain, why he had been beaten, he just had… and like so many he gave up on his dream…
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movingstar
i still remember exactly were i was when my buddy brad got finished telling me he was going to compete in the kumite.¬† sure he was good at martial arts… he had been doing them since he was a kid… sure he was strong for his size… i had heard one story of how he defended himself at a high school party and without breaking a sweat put the toughest kid in school in a submission hold… and this was before, tapout, ultimate fighting and even the tough-man contest… sbut still… fighting in the kumite (most people didn’t even know what that was 15-20 years ago… ) seemed a bit of a stretch for a small town kid from idaho…
as brad finished telling me of his plan:¬† to win kumite and then move to hollywood to be a stuntman… it seemed about as realistic as my other buddy who was with us… who said, he too had a plan… to be a famous extreme skier…¬† so brad continues to do a few pull-ups and then says that he is going to be a stuntman, and jump out of buildings and use his martial arts background to be this wicked stunt double that everybody in the world wanted… (i think he even had a karate kid style sweatband on… i might have too :o) when he was telling us this…
well that summer passed and i was out of town for a couple of months… a few summers went by… and i heard that brad had moved to been going to college in LA…¬† no surprise he was a waiter to pay the bills… but we also heard he had been working out at a martial arts studio… we also heard that he was working towards being a partner in the studio… working towards owning it…¬† rumor had it, it was a really nice studio, in fact a really, really, really nice studio that had a really, really really a good reputation…¬† and quite a few of the clients were movie stars…
you already know where this one is going…¬†
to be cont’d.
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movie star
a couple years went by, when i saw brad and was catching up with him…¬† after first asking how his sister was… (she was¬† a complete hottie)… i said so what’s new…¬† “how’s the stuntman business… ?”
“pretty good”
“pretty good… what do you mean?”
“well, i met up with some stuntmen from my studio… they hooked me up with somebody, and i got some small parts in a couple of movies… that lead to bigger parts…”
“come on… you serious?”
“yeah… its cool and business is good… i love it…”
ffwd>> a decade… so last i had talked to brad, he just finished filming a couple of movies, big movies… not the TBS specials and ninja turtles (which he has also done)… but the real deal blockbuster types (ffwd>> another decade and another buddy was just telling me brad’s company is the largest stuntman company in hollywood… they do the biggest and the best work…) their jobs have included matrix, batman, x-men, spiderman etc… etc… not bad for a kid from a small town in idaho…
how cool is it to drive the bat mobile to work, or surf on the green goblins surfboard?…
more to come…
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kent
one of the other people in the gym when brad made his announcement that he was going to be a stuntman was kent.¬† kent was a friend of a friend who was a really good athlete, a phenomenal soccer player, and into fun stuff.¬† we went rock climbing together, mtn biking, and he was a downhill ski racer…¬† i first sensed the urgency in his heart when he skipped out on a ski race to “shoot a video” with another friend who wasn’t much of a skier at the time, but some how got his hand’s on a video recorder.¬† if i remember he worked/ volunteered at a recording studio (where stevie miller recorded jungle love)…¬† i’m not sure how shawn did it, but he “borrowed” that camera numerous times for a day… or 2 or 3?
so shawn and kent had a video player, shawn was going to be the “videographer”, cinematographer, and kent was going to be the star of the movie… back country sawtooths mountains never have a shortage of couloir’s and cliffs, and teenage boys seem too innocent to know better than to lack vision.¬†
i think they produced a couple hours of footage all in VHS.¬† because they were hiking most of the mountains after school and on weekends most of the shots were short and broken up… none the less i can still remember the video release party…. ok, it was more they brought the video over to my buddies house and we gathered and were mildly impressed…¬† there were a couple of “big air” cliff jumps… (12-15 feet)¬† a couple of pancake landings, a couple of good crashes and some tweaked bones… hardly the stuff¬† back country saga’s were made of…¬†
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pace the race
as it turned out… kent nor shawn didn’t give up… they kept at it… all the while, shawn remained in his day job, honing his editing skills, learning how to mix sound, set staging, and dabbled in marketing… kent, continued to bag big cliffs… learn para-gliding and parachuting… so he could begin to execute the big stuff and they stuck at it…
recently i saw both of them… kent has basically bee in every big ski film for the past 15 years.¬† he fly’s around the globe in pursuit of snow and has a large fan base.¬† i have seen him in base jumping movies, (he not so long ago basejumped off a building in Las Vegas), i have seen him in warren miller flicks, and he has been involved in several of his own films… he’s not a rockstar, but he is a movie star and lives like one…¬† shawn now owns his own production company in LA and promotes as welll as powers up, large venues… concerts, movie sets, etc… he hangs out with rockstars…
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get a life
i want to show quite a few more examples of “case studies”… but i also would like to tease out a view of mentorship… ton’s of people want to be rockstars, docstars, hock(ey)stars… and worst of all mock-stars.¬† not all the time, but some of the time mentorship comes into play… this is along the lines of the social constructs that foment formation of a being…
mentorship isn’t a check list of Que’s that meets once a week for coffee.¬† mentorship isn’t a spontaneous email that starts out… “so how have you been”… NOPE!
way, way, way, before the “medal of mentor” can be worn a crucial starting point has to be established…¬† i would call this relationship…
from what i have seen, even with the best of intentions, budgets, constraints, and open handedness nothing will transpire unless relationship is at the forefront…. Kontract Kill’s Kommunity and Covenant Creates it….
so i lean back on the importance of glass houses and open life books.¬† mentoring has to take place in the trench’s rather than reclined on the couch or chez lounge with a subscription to the relation-less checklist of a white collar taking notes for collateral searching for freudian triggers…
mentoring has to be like the coach, who knows the game, knows how to play, knows what shots will score points, and knows how to shape the team… seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeriously… if a coach doesn’t even know how their athlete did in the last game, they can hardly be considered a future influencer…
at this point in my life, i’m looking for movers, shakers people who inspire, people who have goals and reach them, people who know that a 9-5 is a frame of mind and not a marriage.¬† i may be in a vehement stage, but i am tired of well meaning readers of barna and maxwell that think they have a recipe for success…
++please
o¬†give me the dirty trench crawler with stench on their boots,
o¬†booze on their breath that realize they are broken…
o¬†give me those who have bottomed out and made it back,
o¬†suffered massive tragedy and still have their faith
o¬†a humility for god that isn’t store bought
o¬†a hunger for the spirit that cries out
o¬†a person that weeps over their own insanity
o¬†a person that weeps over their own circumstance
o¬†a person that weeps for the broken
o¬†a person that weeps for change
o¬†a person that understand intellectual debates, and what it means to have a substantial role in those around them++
i think the aforementioned are the starting point qualities for a mentor…¬†
i have been thinking a lot about whether or not mentoring can take place outside of proximity… i think relationship can, i have seen how covenant barely can… (but there has to be quite a bit of proximal contact,) but i’m not sure that mentoring can.¬† at least i haven’t seen it… it logically seems impossible for me¬† to think that mentoring can happen without day in day out intentional investment… btw, that’s a reciprocal exchange in the sensus plenoir of the word allelon…
i can’t even begin to articulate how many i have seen who long for a mentor, how many i know, who don’t know they need one, how many could be changed if they had one, how much of an impact one can have, how long it takes to invest that kind of relationship… it’s an impossible task, yet there are those who pull it off…
show them to me.

immigrant song
Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
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we were in his toyota truck arguing over the lyrics of immigrant song, when one insult lead to another and eventually the argument switched to who of us was the greatest… with 100% conviction my buddy say’s dude…
‚ÄĘ¬†i’m going to win DH world cups,
‚ÄĘ¬†be in the olympics,
‚ÄĘ¬†and then i think i’ll marry miss america.
my other buddy in the car and i start heckling him… dude
‚ÄĘ¬†maybe,
‚ÄĘ¬†maybe
‚ÄĘ¬†and no possible way are you going to marry miss america…
we all laughed.¬† at the time no american had one a DH in years, the olympics seemed pretty far off and miss america, well she didn’t seem to be on the hunt for 16 year old high schoolers…
missamerica
so…. a few years go by we graduate high school and in one winter the same three buddies find themselves on the world cup during a really, really bad snow year… one of the worst on record for europe… a whole bunch of cancellations take place and the schedule gets really modified… the only trouble is it is an Olympic year and they have to get some races off… well guess who as the youngest member of the team makes it?¬† you guessed it… the same buddy in the car!
after doing really well and having some stories to tell, success started to follow for him…
but after the overall lack of press at the Olympics¬† and the inundation of press releases for the upcoming summer Olympics (at the time)¬† the Winter Olympic committee made and unprecedented move… they actually added an Olympics so rather than happening every four years, the winter Olympics actually had a jump…¬† 88′,92′, 94′, 98′¬†¬† so in the course of 10 years rather than an athlete potentially only having 2 Olympics, winter athletes were given 4!…
long story short, he continues on with success and steps up numerous times… AJ continues to win races and win world cups and he did it at a time when at first he was all alone, but after a couple of solid years (and a whole lot of things stacked against him… i mean a book worth of stuff stacked against him… )¬† he started to bring the rest of the team up with him… the man was an inspiration…¬† eventually after a very long career he came out on top and when he retired he was one of the winningest racer’s of his decade…
so he was in the Olympics (4 times!, he did win world cups…) but what about his prediction of marrying miss America? )¬† before he retired one day his sports marketing agency and agent stumbled across an “event”….¬†
“say AJ, any chance you want to be a judge of a contest?¬† …
“Where is it?”¬†
“florida”
“SURE!… what is it?”
“the miss universe competition”
“you mean you want me to be an actual judge at the miss universe competition?”
“yeah”…
to make a long story short he went on to marry miss canada… ok so miss america must have been taken at the time, but you get the picture…¬†
you just can’t make this stuff up…
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got milk?
at 5′ 11″ 175 lbs marcellus was hardly the sort of D-lineman that espn sports center reflects upon as a force …¬†¬† graduating from compton high school¬† in east LA, typically it’s a little tough to get a look from colleges (which is why he pretty much didn’t) back east, especially ivy league colleges… so when marcellus arrived as a freshmen he wasn’t exactly a taunted recruit…
he had however grown a couple inches…. arriving at 6’1″ and having some speed they moved him to tail back…¬† with a long gait, he could get up some speed, but he still couldn’t have weighed more than 180lbs…
i can still remember him laughing it up telling us in the weight room (pre-training camp) when he was barrrrrrrrrrely putting up 185 on the bench press!! that he was going big time…¬†¬† it’s laughable now, that a college freshmen that was recruited could barely¬† bench that… but he always had long term vision…
he used to hold mock press conferences in the locker room, and interviews in the shower using the soap as the mic…
“so marcellus tell us what it was like back when you were a freshman”
“well you see… i drank my milk and ate my wheaties and now after my music carreer has gone full scale and you know, we be hanging with puffy, dmx and the crew… it’s all good”
freshman football served him well and i think he actually made the varsity team that same year in sweep situations…¬† fwdd>>
sophmore year cel arrived at around 6’4″ and started to put some meat on his bones… although he still looked like a beanpole, he must broke the 210lbs mark, which was still not exactly huge, but it was tall for a tail back…
junior year… 6’6″ and 250lbs… no longer a true tailback but still used he was starting to make the switch to defense and left his mark (on the other teams helmet)
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eating wheaties
after a brief sabbatical from school, cell came back really motivated and focused… this time more than ever wanting to be football at a new level…
he had a decent season, and low and behold, got invited to the east/west came, then the combine, then the draft, than backed up bruce smith for 3 years, then was a force at san diego, than on MTV cribs…than dallas, the pro-bowl, then the jaguars, and now can regularly be seen on ESPN sports center…¬†
all this from a kid who got over looked by any reasonable collegiate scout in the country… there was something to him practicing his interviews during stretching, mocking press conferences, and telling us he was going to be a star… oh and did i mention he and another buddy from college made a rap album, that brought them to fame and glory in europe, making consistent club and radio play…¬† there is something to thinking and believing your a rockstar….
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rockstars are contagious
you’ll run into a bunch (band NLT) of prophets coming down
from the shrine, playing harps and tambourines, flutes and drums.
And they’ll be prophesying. Before you know it, the Spirit of GOD
will come on you and you’ll be prophesying right along with them
¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬† 1 sam 10 -eugene peterson
so there is something to hanging out with like minds… a band of prophets… it seems to imply that there is something contagious… i won’t go into this too deep, but let me just stop and say i have seen the spirit stir like minds…
so perhaps you remember my friend who was in the pickup truck that day that he (unintnetionally?) prophesied about world cups and mrs america… if you remember there was another guy in the truck with us…¬† turned out we all hung out together… together a lot… we liked the same music, the same passions, we were a band in our own sense… well as aj (our one friend) started get on a sucess roll, he brought others along with him… todd was one of those who barring a serious injury would have certainly followed in his steps and did all the way through a national title, the world championships, years on the national team etc….¬†
remember an earlier post about spiderman, batman, the matrix (brad)… if you remember i mentioned the story get’s better… here is why:
as brad made gains in hollywood, his reputation grew as did his studio and business.¬† as success breeds success, he needed helpers, assistants and mentors…
well along comes todd….after college, after a successful athletic career, after most were saying get a real job… my friend todd decided he was going to move to LA… hollywood specifically and try to break into “the industry”…
don’t do it EVERYBODY said… YOUR CRAZY,
your set and on your way… but guess what, he and his wife weren’t happy without trying…
at age 30 becoming a movie star seemed like a long shot… they sold their place on the east coast and¬† at the peak of the california housing boom in the 90′s managed to buy a cool place near hollywood (an impossible task in it’s own right!)…¬†
they didn’t listen and moved anyways…so guess who they called when they moved?¬† a friend, they sent up their bat signal and batman brad answered… cutting a long story really short… todd is now a very successful stuntman, who daily works with brad, together they are literally the dynamic duo… last i got a call from todd (a couple of weeks ago) he was on a film set in hawaii for a couple of weeks, filming and surfing in the down time…
rockstar living sounds alright to me…
++you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything ,
help me you make me perfect, help me become somebody else
help me get away from myself
you get me closer to god
help me get away from myself
you get me closer to god
help me get away from myself
you get me closer to god ++¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†
¬†-trent resner, closer 9 inch nails

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a book? the kid kan‚Äôt spel
in no way would i ever believed ramsey was headed off for vietnam… not to fight, but some 20-30 years after a war (he was born at the end of) to teach english in¬† ho chi minh city.
¬†in high school ramsey found himself at a sports academy with some hilarious roommates.¬†¬† looking back at the situation, he easily could have thrown in the towel.¬† ramsey wasn’t the first one to finish the run, wasn’t the one to score the goal, wasn’t the one to win the race, but he did have a penchant for style.¬† he did have the biggest speakers, the loudest amp and the loudest stereo, which was regularly propped up in his dorm window facing out towards the soccer fields, where he played endless frisbee and threw balls (at) or to the dog. and kicked the hacky sack to the point of having Gumby like knees.¬†
typically rasta was his medicine and i can hardly remember a time, when either burning spear or bob marley weren’t playing at illegal decibels…
if you would have asked any of his friends, i don’t’ think we could have predicted that ramsey would find success as a writer…¬† he was the last to turn in the english paper, the one who could be found the night before it was due (finishing it after everybody else cramming) the guy scrambling in late with napkin scribbles (which is incredibly hypocritical to point out but ramsey knew something we didn’t…. he knew what would appeal to people and had a way of putting it down that made sense…. he began writing and co-authoring at times and adventure series of books.¬† the kind where if you want the ending to turn out one way you turn to page 37 or if you want it to turn out another way you turn it to page 88.¬† i can remember reading one of his books once and thinking it was kind of fun, because the outcome could in some sense be shaped, but more so, i was intrigued at the brilliance of the author.¬† it seemed like no matter what the endings made sense….
so it was this creativity in shaping outcomes that i think ramsey took with him in his greater life mission to help NGO’s (non governmental organizations) in south east asia develop low cost libraries in china, vietnam and cambodia (to the equivalent of $150 usamerican dollars.)
yep rams did it… he was a rockstar… living burden of success and being who he was supposed to be…
RIP ramsey….
¬†

what‚Äôs a leader
when i plant a church¬† and i am looking for leaders i look for
10 people that have gone through tragedy,
that have lost their faith and regained it,
that have fallen in love…
out of love…
and back into it stronger
that can balance their checkbook
and
cast out demon…
but aren’t weirdo’s
that deal with addiction and recovery
that i can hang with
that are in it for the long haul
that have a track record
who are faceless
¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬† -mcLeese rockstar elder
¬†

hipstar
edie’s story could start a lot of places, we won’t mention that before the age of 30 she had accumulated a couple handful’s of national titles, world cup starts, world championship teams and olympic appearances;¬† all this despite a body that seemed in constant repair (numerous knee surgeries)…¬† she embodies the persona of professional athlete with unsuspecting grace.
in addtion, injuries are the stuff that rockstars look past, so edie doesn’t qualify just by a couple of good results in international appearances…
edie qualifies for heroic efforts of
“after the fall”…¬†
obviously this could be a metaphor for a lot of things,
a fall
that preceded winter
with the thought of retirement,
a fall
that lead to a career ending injury,
a fall
from the limelight,
a fall
into a new career
a falling
in love.¬†
edie was in the midst of a career change, although a tad older than the average college student, she moved from athlete to writer… i suppose in many ways the steps towards success are more quantitative and predictable in sports; in athletics these steps are all laid out… show up at a competition, do well, train for the next one, do well, set the goal on the next one, and go as long as you can…

it seems like in the arts, that the “system” or the process is far less defined. the infamous…¬†
“How Do You Become a Rockstar~Author?”
literally…
more to come…
¬†

u on yo‚Äô own
so what edie some how navigated was the how to…

oh sure, knowing you want to be an author is pretty easy, there are a thousands who have the same wish and dreams, but funny thing they don’t teach you in high school, under grad, or even graduate school is the how to get your name in lights… how to be a rockstar…¬†¬† they’ll teach you
‚ÄĘ¬†how to write prose
‚ÄĘ¬†how to write intriguing story
‚ÄĘ¬†how to develop character (although not necessarily as a trait)
‚ÄĘ¬†how please the professor
‚ÄĘ¬†how to get in debt . . .
but once that diploma is in hand “u on yo’own”.¬†
my good friend was talking about a mutual friend of ours who is successful at business, but was a former pro athlete… he said
“well it doesn’t surprise me,
he just took that formula of hard work, drive…
basically the pattern for success
and
threw it into his business…”
but again, the how to … the how to seems mystical, seems daunting, overwhelming, confusing, scary, distant… but it is sort of like a fire, once you prepare the tinder bundle, and actually begin to get a spark, with a little nurturing the flames come.
¬†edie the fight club champion prevailed… teaming with a like minded allie and after working her way up to a senior editor in a very popular sports magazine, edie threw her hat in the ring, and stepped up to the challenge.¬† she just started to do it… writing, interviewing, story telling, writing… when she had finished the result was a book…¬† and ironically it seems to be a how to book… an apparently by its sales, more people than you would think need a how to book … ill leave the link to let you know what it is about www.findingthedoorbell.com
¬†
¬†¬†
21 attributes
since it’s the 21st Rock star post i thought i would do a 21 rock star attribute list…
1.¬†rockstar’s loathe people that tell them NO…not because rockstars are obstinate, unruly, or contest in the court, but because Naysayers are losers, Naysayers are soft, Naysayers are babies, Naysayers are control freaks that lack vision, Naysayers are the opposite of rock stars, Naysayers are comfortable (or too bitter to see) living a chance-less, risk-less, boring life… did i mention i can’t stand being around Naysayers?¬†¬† it’s not even fun to show a naysayer up because their not worth the time of day
2.¬†rockstar’s are inspiring…
3.¬†rockstar’s have posse’s… they bring their friends along and travel with vision
4.¬†rockstar’s can’t wrap their heads around not being able to do something…
5.¬†rockstar’s love the expression “Why not?” and “You can too”
6.¬†rockstar’s don’t need the money
7.¬†rockstar’s get arrested, but they also avoid jail
8.¬†people think rockstar’s are lucky… but rockstar’s are calculated, and the brilliant ones are so consistent, that people call them lucky
9.¬†rockstar’s are students
10.¬†rockstar’s study
11.¬†rockstar’s can practice harder, learn longer and outlast their competition
12.¬†rockstar’s rise above
13.¬†rockstar’s try
14.¬†put a rockstar in the ring, and they will make it out of ANY battle.
15.¬†rockstar’s can figure things out… the put the life in the expression life long learner
16.¬†rockstar’s know how to live
17.¬†rockstar’s can synthesize with more than an electric piano, the can take in feedback and adjust the dials so that they sound better (their coach-able)
18.¬†rockstar’s only listen with one ear; they listen for feedback, pitch and harmonies with the one and their own voice with the other.
19.¬†rockstar’s have dressing rooms because they know how important it is to wear their own clothes
20.¬†rockstar’s know how to party
21.¬†rockstar’s die strong, because their thinking about living- they know heaven is the goal not only the destination